OpenAPI Companion

Built from real, current evidence across four independent sources in this exact space, not assumptions:

• OpenAPI Editor (Sebastian Monte, paid, 47,670 downloads): a multi-year, recurring pattern across real reviews (2021 through 2025) of falling two or more JetBrains releases behind after every new IDE version -- "Not worth buying until its fixed," "the fix requires several weeks" -- plus a direct functional gap: "Doesn't support external references; not usable."
• OpenAPI (Swagger) Editor (42Crunch, freemium, ~700K downloads): "please fix the high memory usage when the live preview is open... it keep on growing until the IDE crashes," plus incomplete OAS 3.1 support despite advertising it.
• Zalando OpenAPI Editor (free, abandoned since 2023, ~722K downloads): "Makes the whole IDE pretty much unusable on large openapi files. We have like 10+ seconds lags every couple seconds."
• JetBrains's own bundled OpenAPI plugin -- independently documented elsewhere in this catalog (api-security-companion's own evidence trail) as "catastrophically slow... turned into torture" even on small 10-15-endpoint files.

Four different vendors, four different pricing models, the same real gap: nobody in this space reliably resolves external references without freezing the IDE.